Drop Pounds Fast

Transform yourself: Weight control tips to help you lose big and eat healthier

Dec 21, 2005

Editor's note: We'll add a new tip to the list every day -- Monday through Friday -- for 5 weeks to help improve your health.

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Week 5: Rise and Dine

1. Have Another Pint

Blueberries are one of the most healthful foods you can eat. They beat out 39 other fruits and vegetables in the antioxidant power ratings, making them a great hedge against cellular damage that contributes to heart disease and cancer.

One study also found that rats who gobbled blueberries were more coordinated and smarter than rats who didn't. Make it your goal to eat a pint of blueberries every week.

2. Put a Lid on It

You can dramatically reduce the amount of oil needed to pan-fry foods simply by keeping a lid on the pot. By catching and returning moisture that would normally escape, the lid eliminates the need for more oil.

3. Stop for the Egg McMuffin

Believe it or not, you can eat two Egg McMuffin sandwiches from McDonald's and get fewer calories and less fat than if you'd had a bagel with 4 tablespoons of cream cheese. The McMuffins yield 580 calories, 24 g fat, and 34 g protein. The bagel delivers 643 calories, 28 g fat, and 20 g protein.

4. Weigh Yourself Daily

The biggest health risk for adults is weight gain, so monitor yours daily. When you step on the scale each morning, compare what you're seeing today with yesterday, this week with last week, this month with last month, this year with last year.

When you see an increase, immediately go to portion control and increase physical activity. You usually cannot sense a 3- to 5-pound weight gain without a scale.

Because its dressing contains so much oil, Caesar salad can be 70 to 80 percent fat. (One tablespoon of oil is 120 calories of pure fat.) And since it's tossed before it's served, you can't control the amount of dressing that's applied. Order the house salad with dressing on the side instead.

2.Steer Clear of Trans Fats

According to a Harvard University study, you could cut your heart-attack risk in half by cutting out just 4 g trans fats each day. You'll find them in stick margarine, crackers, cookies, cakes, and many deep-fried foods, especially french fries.

Look for the phrase "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" on the label. The closer to the top of the ingredient list you find it listed, the more trans fats the food contains.

3. Drink Milk after Eating Steak

Here's a way to feel better about indulging in that occasional juicy steak: Wash it down with a tall glass of skim milk. According to research, calcium may reduce the amount of saturated fat your body absorbs. Like fiber, calcium binds with fat molecules and helps flush them out of the intestines.

4. Freeze Mister!

One of the easiest ways to improve your diet is by stocking your freezer with bags of frozen vegetables. Not only do they provide a variety of nutrients, but they're also convenient. Throw a handful in soups, stews, stir-frys, and instant rice dishes.

Frozen vegetables are usually frozen within a few hours of harvest, so their nutritional quality can actually be better than fresh. The same goes for frozen fruit. It's especially good for sprinkling on low-fat yogurt or mixing into smoothies.

5. Buy the Brightest Vegetables You See

Vibrant colors usually correspond with more vitamins. This means go easy on iceberg lettuce, celery, and cucumbers and load up on carrots, tomatoes, red peppers, and sweet potatoes. They're higher in vitamins such as A and C.

Or go for darker shades of greens. Romaine lettuce, for example, has nearly seven times the vitamin C and twice the calcium of its paler iceberg cousin.

The same holds true for fruit. Pink grapefruit, for instance, has more than 40 times the vitamin A of white grapefruit.

If you wake up craving hotcakes, try this tip from Jan McBarron, M.D., of Columbus, Georgia: Drink at least 4 ounces of water and take an antacid before bed. A large dinner can produce extra stomach acid that stays in your system all night and can cause morning hunger pangs, which in many cases can lead to Denny's.

2. Schedule a Cheat Day

That is, reward yourself once a week by eating whatever you want, guilt-free. You won't pay the price in more pounds -- and you'll give yourself some psychological relief. It's how you eat most of the time, not every single meal, that matters.

An added bonus: A high-calorie day of eating can rev up your metabolism. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that men who ate twice as many calories in a day as normal increased their metabolism by 9 percent in the 24-hour period that followed.

3. Redecorate

"Move the fruit bowl to a handy place so you can grab a piece or two on your way out the door," says Donald Hensrud, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Executive Health Program and editor-in-chief of Mayo Clinic's Healthy Weight for Everybody.

Grab an apple, pear, banana, or some other fruit you can eat while driving. Shove an orange in your briefcase; it's your antidote to the afternoon slump.

4. Solve Your Drinking Problem

Liquid calories sneak up on most dieters. Buy a 32-ounce Nalgene bottle, keep it full of water, and drink it down at least twice a day. If you feed your caffeine habit with regular infusions of 20-ounce colas, making the water switch will save you upwards of 400 calories a day -- that's 42 pounds in a year.

What's more, fluid balance is crucial when you're exercising on a calorie-restricted diet, says Robert McMurray, Ph.D., a professor of sports nutrition at the University of North Carolina. You're burning protein along with fat, which increases your body's need for water.

5. Broccoli is the King of Vegetables

It's high in fiber and more densely packed with vitamins and minerals than almost any other food.

In fact, a cup of steamed broccoli delivers almost half the recommended dietary allowance of vitamin A, more than 150 percent of vitamin C, 7 percent of calcium, 13 percent of iron, 8 percent of thiamine, and 5 percent of niacin -- a real bargain at only 44 calories. Ounce for ounce, steamed fresh broccoli contains nearly 90 percent of the vitamin C of fresh orange juice and almost half as much calcium as milk.

How to calm your cravings and crankiness while adjusting to a new way of eating

Go on to the next page to read more tips from week 2...

WEEK 2: Plan to Lose Weight

1. Make Fiber Your Friend

Fiber is incredibly important when it comes to weight management. There are three reasons for this: (1) Fiber-rich foods generally take longer to chew, meaning you'll eat more slowly and probably eat less. (2) They take longer to digest, which means more time will pass before you feel hungry again. (3) Putting fiber in your stomach is like eating a sponge; it soaks up surrounding water, making you feel fuller. Strive for 25 to 35 grams of fiber every day.

2. Slice Fat from Pizza

Always order your pizza with double tomato sauce and light cheese. Men who eat a lot of tomato products tend to have less prostate cancer -- probably because tomatoes are a rich source of lycopene. Reducing the mozzarella by just one-third (you won't miss it) will save you 20 grams (g) of fat per pie.

Always shop on a full stomach. Then your good sense won't have to fight bad advice from hungry tastebuds.

2. Spend Your Bread Wisely
Shopping in the bread aisle, you naturally grab a loaf of something brown -- must be higher in fiber than Wonderbread, right? Well, no. That dark complexion may be courtesy of molasses or food dyes. Likewise, a loaf with seeds or oatmeal flakes on top isn't necessarily high in fiber, either.

To be sure you're a bread winner, look for the phrase "100 percent whole-wheat" or "whole-grain."

3. Drink Leftover Milk
Your favorite breakfast cereal may be fortified with a veritable alphabet of vitamins, but that doesn't mean you're getting all of the nutrients listed on the side of the box. Up to 40 percent of the vitamins in the cereal quickly dissolve into the milk. To make sure you get the most vitamins from fortified breakfast cereals, drink the milk left in your bowl.

4. Drop and Gimme Two!
For safe, lasting weight loss, don't lose more than 2 pounds per week. The biggest drawback of rapid weight loss is that you're far more likely to regain the weight. People who shed pounds quickly typically rely on extreme exercise programs or very-low-calorie diets, which are tough to maintain for more than a few weeks.

Rapid weight loss also involves losing fluid, which can be dangerous if you're engaged in serious exercise. Often, those who quickly lose a lot of weight rebound to a higher weight.

5. Watch the Cookie Crumble
A cookie's crumble indicates its fat content. Harder cookies like gingersnaps and vanilla wafers have about half the fat of their soft cousins. To be doubly sure, rest your favorite on a napkin. If it leaves a grease stain, leave it alone.

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